LA Businesses Push for Nation’s Largest Solar Feed-In Tariff

The business community in Los Angeles is going green in a big way by pushing forward a plan to energize the city with the nation’s largest solar feed-in tariff. At the forefront of the movement is the Solar Coalition led by the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC), and the plan has support from local non-profit and environmental organizations including Global Green, the Sierra Club, and the United States Green Building Council. The coalition campaign calls for a 600 megawatt Solar Feed-in Tariff program that will help ensure private investment in solar while helping meet Mayor Antonio Villariagosa’s renewable energy goals.

The 600 megawatt proposal was derived from a study initiated by the LABC Solar Coalition in conjunction with the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation that looked at the feasibility and impact of a solar FiT program in Los Angeles. The plan also would help create 11,000 local green jobs, generating enough clean energy to meet three percent of Los Angeles’ needs.

“A solar feed-in tariff can be one of the easiest and fastest ways to make real progress towards the goals that Los Angeles has set for itself,” notes lead author and project manager at the Luskin Center of Innovation, Ryan Matulka.“This type of program takes advantage of L.A.’s underutilized rooftop and parking lot assets to generate clean energy and jobs. If it is properly designed and implemented, it can be a win-win for all the stakeholders involved.”

Just last week, Council Woman Jan Perry, chair of the Energy and Environment Committee, agreed to bring the coalition’s latest study to the Los Angeles Council. The study will undergo a 45-day review period after which the FiT program could be implemented before to the end of this year.

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adamclark1August 9, 2010 at 11:40 pm

Curiously, they don’t explain how this program would work. So let me take a crack at it. Solar panel companies make a very expensive product right now. It is only available to the very wealthy. They come up with an idea to lobby State and Federal government to subsidize some of the cost of the panels with taxpayers’ money. Solar panel companies are happy. YAY! General contractors want to install these panels, but there aren’t enough jobs to hire full-time workers AND service a reasonable market area. They need more jobs per given market area to make a respectable profit. Meanwhile, solar panel companies have exhausted the tiny sliver of market share they gained by the gov’t subsidies. Now neither the solar panel company nor the general contractor are happy. BTW, this works for wind power, too. As well as any other type of renewable energy.

This is where the Solar Coalition led by the Los Angeles Business Council (LABC), Global Green, The Sierra Club and USGBC step in. They lobby local and regional governments to pass a law MANDATING that every power company provide power to every business and residence with XX% renewable energy. Of course the “XX” will never stay static. It will go up according to the whim of the politician and the pressure of the lobbyist. This will raise everybody’s energy bill.

Who wins? Solar panel companies get to make more panels. General contractors get to install more panels. Wind and others benefit, too. Green groups get more money from green companies and contractors. They buy more lobbyists. More lobbyists buy more politicians. “XX” goes up.

Who loses? Everyone else!

Bottom line…instead of creating a competitive product, green companies are pressuring government to steal from everyone else to subsidize their product.

Is this the kind of America we want? A weak-minded, thin-skinned ruling class that is bought and sold as easily as they are corrupted by the power to control people and businesses? Jeopardy question: This form of government is defined generally as, “government control of private companies”. Answer: What is “Fascism”. Greenies don’t mind Fascism when it benefits them and their cause. Think about this one… What if the government decided that there weren’t enough churches? That’s easy. We’ll just pass a law to implement a church tax. Every one will pay, let’s say, XX% of their income. All the money will go to Christian churches. We can’t give it to the other churches because they are “bad for the environment”.

“I think when we spread the wealth around a little bit, everybody benefits” –Barack Obama July ’08